force handlers to run

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1

Say I have a playbook like this:

  • name: install apache config
    copy: src=httpd.conf dest=/etc/httpd.conf
    notify: restart apache
  • name: do something that fails

command: false

I ran it without --force-handlers. The first command ran successfully, and reported a change. The second command failed, and as a result, the “restart apache” handler doesn’t get called.

If I run it again, even with --force-handlers, the first command won’t report a change, so the handler still won’t get called. This leaves the node in an incomplete state.

Is there a way to handle this kind of situation easily? Obviously in this case I can manually restart Apache, but in more complex cases, I’d like to be able to force the handler to run.

Or is the solution to always run with --force-handlers, so it never gets in this state to begin with?

Thanks,
Jacob

2

Yes, currently the only way to avoid that is always run with
--force-handlers. I do have on the wishlist to add this to ansible.cfg
so you can set it globally and not specify it.